Monday, June 01, 2015

It is impossible to simultaneously understand the theory of evolution and to believe in blank-slate cognitive equality among human groups of different continental origins.

Both propositions—evolution and equality—cannot simultaneously be true. You have to pick one. Choose wisely, because you can’t have both.

Either evolution is a real and ongoing process that has rendered different groups with different mean aptitudes, or we’re all equal—and thus all measurable group disparities in things such as income and intelligence are due to unfairness, hatred, injustice, and flat-out stinking evil.

Yet against all logic and evidence and propelled purely by the smarmiest sort of saccharine emotionality that has ever been shit-sprayed out of human hearts, modern progressives insist that these two fundamentally contradictory belief systems are simultaneously true.
“What sort of person who claims to believe in evolution would deny its fundamental role in shaping human history?”

They insist that evolution is real and that only a dumb hillbilly would not believe in it. But they also insist that evolution had nothing to do with quantifiable disparities between groups in brain size and intelligence, and even if those dumb apelike hillbillies consistently score higher on intelligence tests than your average nonwhite hood rat, well, then, you’re dumb—and evil—for even noticing.

Now, I happen to be skeptical of one and outright reject both the existence and the possibility of the other. But that is an intellectually consistent position. Subscribing to both evolution and equality is intrinsically nonsensical.

114 Comments:

You are absolutely correct about that. But that doesn't stop the vile Progs from taking their inconsistency and trying to beat you about the head with it. What's consistency when you can be a member of the "true faith" and believe what the glorious leaders want you to.

It is possible that TENS or genetic drift did not significantly affect those genomic regions responsible for intelligence, however, that seems very unlikely with the observable differences in intelligence across both groups and individuals.

Asians and whites would have died off if they didn't plan/build/store to survive winters without food growing. Until Whitey brought quinine to Africa, outbreeding disease was the way to win Darwin's game.White men walked on the moon when the entire world had less computing power than a smartphone today. NASA with affirmative action failed twice to put satellites in orbit last year. Try running HALO4 on an abacus to get an idea of 100,000 years of evolution in opposite directions.

Without performance enhancing drugs you get what the Olympics show, blacks win short distance runs and none in strength events. Greeks built a primitive computer to track stars while blacks didn't know enough to plant more berry bushes to get more berries. The only question is do I argue Asian superiority with 1 out of 50 Asian males getting a perfect math SAT or do I post a link to 8000 Chinese students kicked out of colleges for using ringers to take SAT tests for them http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/05/29/u-s-schools-expelled-8000-chinese-students-for-poor-grades-cheating/?mod=e2twy

Suppose someone modified the "equality" thesis as follows: "While it can be stipulated that differences in baseline median IQ and variations in aptitude and capacity can be observed to exist among population subgroups, the deviations are neither consistent enough between randomly selected individuals nor wide enough in degree to justify differing pre-emptive legal treatment on a group basis."

The primary terror of progressivist thought has always been the use of an observed general difference in aptitude or behaviour pattern to justify an absolute proscription of opportunity based on that observation. In itself this is not an unjust complaint. The weaknesses of the current movement are (a) the belief that the only way to prevent such policy is to deny the possibility of the difference even existing, and (b) the refusal to see the inconsistency in how they assess opponents of progressivism, i.e. their willingness to use absolute proscriptions on those from whom they asked for just exceptions for their own favoured groups.

This is the thing about Asian culture and the reason Europeans and European-American nationalists don’t give a damn about being outscored by them in IQ tests. There is much more to life than being smart. It’s important, really, really important, but it’s not everything. I don’t want a Chinese future for my children, and would reject it even if it meant that we’d all be much smarter on average. I’m quite happy with my Anglo/Common Law heritage and will take that any day of the week over anything Chinese or otherwise East Asian.

I’ve always found it quite funny that we “Nazis” are really the only people in the debate who are happy letting each nation tend its own garden, as it is. I’m quite happy to leave China to the Chinese. They just need to get the hell out of California, Massachusetts, British Columbia and New South Wales.

Progressives don't believe in evolution because they don't even know what evolution is. Genuflection before "science" is just tribal signaling, nothing more. Ask them the most basic question about evolution from a freshman high-school biology class and they will lay waste to the laws of probability and give more wrong answers than someone truly ignorant of the topic would produce.

The primary terror of progressivist thought has always been the use of an observed general difference in aptitude or behaviour pattern to justify an absolute proscription of opportunity based on that observation. In itself this is not an unjust complaint. The weaknesses of the current movement are (a) the belief that the only way to prevent such policy is to deny the possibility of the difference even existing, and (b) the refusal to see the inconsistency in how they assess opponents of progressivism, i.e. their willingness to use absolute proscriptions on those from whom they asked for just exceptions for their own favoured groups.

Actually, the kicker is that this is actually how they think. All SJW thinking is group based, so if they admit that Blacks generally have less intellectual horsepower than Whites, they will feel obligated to start treating all Blacks as stupider than Whites. Anything else would be Tokenism.

Precisely. It's only a terror for them because they have no means to adapt it to their ideology without eugenics programs and pogroms. When "science" is the source of your ethics and morality, it's very important that "science" says the right things.

I've got to admit; the realization that SJWs always project their own fears/inadequacies into you was more eye-opening and more important in my approach to them than the realization that they always lie.

It's group based and power based. The Marxist heritage of SJW-thought characterizes all human relationships as essentially power struggles; classic Marxism casts these struggles as primarily economic over material capital -- resources, wealth and property -- whereas cultural Marxism casts them as primarily psychological and relational over social capital: prestige, respect, affirmation and validation. The ultimate evil in classic Marxism is private property, which is theft, and which thus requires the delegitimization of the concept of ownership; in cultural Marxism it is discrimination and denial of social affirmation, which requires the delegitimization of the concepts of judgement, condemnation and exclusion.

That there is no room in this philosophy to believe in love and friendship for their own sake, but only as manifestations of political agreement (and thus impossible to believe in absent that agreement) is one of the reasons I will never be a Marxist, of any stripe.

“What sort of person who claims to believe in evolution would deny its fundamental role in shaping human history?”

The same sort of person who believes in multiculturalism while simultaneously denying that differences in culture could explain differences in income, education, and propensity to obey the law. These things are very, very important to believe*, I guess, even though they have no real, actual effects. SJWs are simply magical thinkers for whom cause-and-effect is simply another example of systemic racism, sexism, and badthink in general.

This is an old battle. Tom Bethell wrote "Burning Darwin to Save Marx" for Harper's in 1978. Marxist biologists, most notably Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould (recently exposed for the fraud he was), pilloried Sociobiology (re-named Evolutionary Psychology) which dared treat behavior as a biological trait. E.O. Wilson had water dumped on his head at an AAAS conference by a member of a Marxist front group. Why everything but human intellect should be subject to biology never made sense to me but the tabula rasa is the core tenet of leftism. Humans must be infinitely malleable or else society can never be perfected with just the right application of force.

I'm sure it's been said before, but White Men Can't Jump has to be among the most racist movie titles in history. It's tantamount to Black Men Can't Do Long Division, and we know that's racist.

Also, as a Caucasian male I am beside myself in righteous indignation that the NBA is chock full of Blacks and has only token Caucasian and Asian players and relegates Latino men to baseball. We're all the same, or we're different, right?

Why everything but human intellect should be subject to biology never made sense to me but the tabula rasa is the core tenet of leftism.

Well, that's because evolution stopped at the neckline, silly. Once you accept that dogma then it's OK for Olympic 50 meter dashes to always be won by men of West African descent, because muscles are organs and the brain is not.

JimIt's only a terror for them because they have no means to adapt it to their ideology without eugenics programs and pogroms. When "science" is the source of your ethics and morality, it's very important that "science" says the right things.

This is quite insightful. Since there is no scientific reason for pity, or compassion, therefore the SJW's are always only a few steps away from mass extermination of untermensch, or at least they fear it to be so. Combine that with their insistence on projecting constantly and their various obsessions become more clear.

By Alan Cromer's view, it took the decentralization of the seafaring Greeks to develop real science.

Science and technology are not the same thing, of course, and a culture yielding excellence at the latter (due to lots of very bright people steeped in it) does not necessarily do the former equally well. Mean IQ isn't the only thing that matters. This is in part why US engineering firms don't transplant well to China.

The primary terror of progressivist thought has always been the use of an observed general difference in aptitude or behaviour pattern to justify an absolute proscription of opportunity based on that observation.

The idea that heritable physical traits are a reliable predictor of individual virtues (intelligence; self-discipline; empathy, etc.) in a given population of people who appear to share a racial phenogype is only a horror if socialist and communists buy into it.

In a free, morally upright society, it's merely a curiosity, like bimetallism.

Which means that those on the left are correct to advise each other to keep away from Vox Day and his ilk: Unclean! Poison! . They're one blog post away from going full-metal-Nazi on an unsuspecting racial sub-group. Huh.

"modern progressives insist that these two fundamentally contradictory belief systems are simultaneously true."

The key word is "believe" to be true. They have their own religious beliefs and they fight to believe it to the end. They believe in evolution for this gave rise to the universe and living creatures. They believe in equality for this means all things are given a equal chance of success. Since things are not equal, the idea is equality is given a chance. They will create laws to equality happen and ensure living creatures are saved despite all evidence that they are going extinct. Authority over reality via making new reality is what progressives want.

Oh, I'm with you. And I know how painful it is to see. I imagine a future European-American state where all European-Americans can live in our common North American home, in peace, dignity and with full self-determination.

after the creation of language, and especially written language, the effect of genetic material on the intellectual capabilities of a human may be in the noise, compared to the cumulative effect of the environment. Excepting of course extreme cases of illness and may be genius. Richard Dawkins wrote about it in The Selfish Gene. So there's a possible resolution to the apparent contradiction.

I’m quite happy to leave China to the Chinese. They just need to get the hell out of California, Massachusetts, British Columbia and New South Wales.

As someone who's stuck in the area, let me suggest that you allow the Chinese to remain in Massachusetts, and send most of the whites to China. Massachusetts is a prime example of whites soiling their own nest.

"The idea that heritable physical traits are a reliable predictor of individual virtues (intelligence; self-discipline; empathy, etc.) in a given population of people who appear to share a racial phenotype is only a horror if socialist and communists buy into it. In a free, morally upright society, it's merely a curiosity, like bimetallism."

In all fairness, one's assessment of whether that idea is a "horror" or not may well be affected by how likely one considers oneself to suffer from it or not should it be widely implemented. My opinion on whether it is acceptable to admit that Asian men are generally mathematically smarter than white men, and factor that into a decision-making process, may vary if I am up against a fellow from Beijing for an accounting job.

(I don't believe Marxist power dynamics explain all human interactions, but I do believe they are more present than they should be in many actual relationships.)

Part of the problem is that too many people have the Star Trek idea of evolution, where it's directed along a set course by your genes, as if whatever humanity will be 1000 years from now is already encoded now and will develop with time. If you believe that, then it seems reasonable that you could divide a group of humans into two separate groups for eons and have them develop in the same ways as long as their environments weren't drastically different, because they both have the same "programming."

But that's not at all what TENS believes (that's actually much closer to ID). TENS says evolution comes from random mutations, which on rare occasions survive because they happen to be beneficial in the environment. So as soon as you separate your two groups, they will start having different mutations. Even if their environments are the same, they will diverge genetically more and more with time as those random variations multiply. If their environments are different -- arctic versus tropical, perhaps -- that may accelerate the process, but that's not actually necessary in the non-directed mutation model. Just dividing the groups so that a particular mutation that occurs and spreads through one group can't spread to the other is enough.

If they stick with TENS as it's currently taught, all they have left is to argue that the human brain is the only part of any organism that's unaffected by mutations, which is silly, but it's a last resort.

That hit me one day when I was walking down the street and met a black guy going the other way: "If I were a leftist, and I admitted that blacks have a lower group IQ than whites, then I would look down on this man as lesser, maybe even less human than me. That's unacceptable, therefore black IQ is not lower, and/or IQ doesn't exist."

They can't imagine that they could recognize material differences between groups without using that to judge individuals and their value as human beings. That's also why they think we have to be lying when we say we do just that.

This raises the question: if you don't believe in evolution/natural selection, how do you explain the differences between races? The whim of God? For that matter, how do you explain the differences between breeds of dogs, if natural (or in this case, artificial) selection isn't real?

The long jump probably isn't as bad for whites as the short sprints, either -- whites went 1-2 in 2012, though I only glanced at the recent Olympic results, so maybe that's just an anomaly that doesn't give a full picture of the state of the event (can't see how whites could be doing worse than at the 100m, though). For the "technique vs. raw ability" question, the triple jump would be worth comparing, since that must be more technical than the long jump, while otherwise using similar abilities.

>"If I were a leftist, and I admitted that blacks have a lower group IQ than whites, then I would look down on this man as lesser, maybe even less human than me. That's unacceptable, therefore black IQ is not lower, and/or IQ doesn't exist."

Seems very similar to the thought process that often gets followed in the rejection of TENS, no? "If man evolved from apes, then the story written in Genesis about God creating everything as-is must necessarily be incorrect, which is unacceptable, ergo evolution is an evil, secular lie."

I am a lawyer and I frequently use contradictory theses depending on what I'm trying to prove, whom I'm trying to convince, etc.

I might be wrong here, but it would seem to me, based on years of observations, that there is a slight chance progressives may not have that much interest in what is truth or not.

It could be that they have other goals (say extermination(mongrelization) of all races of peoples) and they will scream "science" or "equality" or "atheism" or even defend religion and so on depending on what they want to impose on others on that occasion.

Or maybe progressives are just like women, where the truth doesn't matter because they just know, in their feelings, that A is B and A is not B at the same time, and none of what you say matters.

Christians can believe in fundamental equality because we are not materialists--we believe in a unique and transcendent worth to every human that is not dependant upon their thoughts or capabilities. However, progressives, finding Christianity untenable (or more honestly simply uncomfortable) have jetisoned it and retained, and even deified, the idea of equality, simultaneously believing that everyone is equal in all important ways, and that diversity makes us stronger.

But, as Vox and Jim Goad (and others) point out, their beloved science (sorry, make that "Science, bitches!") proves their own belief in equality is far more untenable than Christianity was. Ironically, they have destroyed the only rational underpinnings for the philosophy that they claim to love. Perhaps this is the origin of some of the liberal hate and anger and hypocrisy, this buzzing cognitive dissonance that warns them away from such bad think. Or maybe, knowing what they are capable of, having cast off any non-utilitarian moral restraints, they fear what they themselves will be able to be persuaded to abide by, when they face the nigh-irrevocable group differences and how unsuited to the modern world some seem to be.

This raises the question: if you don't believe in evolution/natural selection, how do you explain the differences between races? The whim of God? For that matter, how do you explain the differences between breeds of dogs, if natural (or in this case, artificial) selection isn't real?

People who disbelieve in evolution by natural selection are different than those who disbelieve in natural selection.

As for explaining why human races have different qualities, designer's "whim" is one way of putting it. Why is one car red and another yellow? Different design with different emphasis.

"This raises the question: if you don't believe in evolution/natural selection, how do you explain the differences between races? The whim of God? For that matter, how do you explain the differences between breeds of dogs, if natural (or in this case, artificial) selection isn't real? "

One can not believe that evolution can be solely responsible for the creation of all life while still believing that the processes proposed to explain it do have some lesser but still significant effect.

Also, disbelieving in evolution one still finds no reason why biological equality is necessarily true.

This raises the question: if you don't believe in evolution/natural selection, how do you explain the differences between races?

You're confusing two different things. Everyone believes in micro-evolution, the increase or decrease of traits within a species over time. You can practice it yourself if you raise something like rabbits with a short generation span. Taller, stronger, faster, brighter colors, that kind of thing.

That's very different from the idea that you can get entirely new traits and new species that way, just by saying, "A lot can happen in that many years." Getting bigger rabbits by breeding your biggest rabbits and eating the runts is not the same thing as breeding dogs and ending up with horses, no matter the time frame.

Seems very similar to the thought process that often gets followed in the rejection of TENS, no?

I don't know anyone who rejects TENS because Genesis, no. In fact, I know plenty of people who accept both TENS and Genesis on faith. Some do it by considering Genesis an allegory, and believing that God created humanity through TENS rather than as the single act literally described. One priest told me it's okay to believe that men evolved from apes, as long as we believe that at some point God selected an Adam and Eve from that process and they became the first humans.

Not that there's anything wrong with rejecting a theory because it conflicts with the divinely inspired Word of God, of course. But it's not necessary to depend on that alone, since TENS is iffy enough to reject on its own.

The primary terror of progressivist thought has always been the use of an observed general difference in aptitude or behaviour pattern to justify an absolute proscription of opportunity based on that observation. In itself this is not an unjust complaint. The weaknesses of the current movement are (a) the belief that the only way to prevent such policy is to deny the possibility of the difference even existing, and (b) the refusal to see the inconsistency in how they assess opponents of progressivism, i.e. their willingness to use absolute proscriptions on those from whom they asked for just exceptions for their own favoured groups.

Actually, the kicker is that this is actually how they think. All SJW thinking is group based, so if they admit that Blacks generally have less intellectual horsepower than Whites, they will feel obligated to start treating all Blacks as stupider than Whites. Anything else would be Tokenism. -Danby

Nicely put. Isn't there a handicapping system used in golf that is explicitly based on the observed differences in skill levels between the different players? I don't play golf so I forget what they call it, affirmative action or something like that?

The best explanation I've heard regarding the extrapolation of micro-evolution to macro-evolution, and the disconnect that people have making it, or crediting how random mutations can evolve entirely new species, still goes to Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park. He opined, through the narrative of the paleontologist protagonist, that it comes down to a fundamental inability of the human mind to comprehend the timespans involved. If we could appreciate how long a million years really is, he suggested, macro-evolution would seem just as intuitive and obvious as micro-evolution.

. If we could appreciate how long a million years really is, he suggested, macro-evolution would seem just as intuitive and obvious as micro-evolution.

Another just-so story from a believer in evolution. Who'd have guessed?

The problem is not an inability to understand the timeframe, it's that, given what we know about mutation rates, and the occurrence of beneficial mutations, the number of of species currently on the planet could not be achieved. Not just within the lifespan of the planet, but within the time between the Big Bang and the heat death of the universe.

it comes down to a fundamental inability of the human mind to comprehend the timespans involved.

Yes, that's the dodge they use. But the truth is that we can comprehend the time spans involved. A million isn't even that big a number. A game of "A million bottles of beer on the wall" wouldn't take more than about half a year, assuming 8 hours a night off for sleep.

And whether or not we can comprehend the large numbers involved intuitively, we can certainly do the math (as I just did there) and break down how quickly things would have to happen to fit in the time available. I don't have to "comprehend" a million years to do the math and see that I couldn't carry each grain of sand individually from one mile of beach to the next in that million years, and the same kind of calculations and comparisons can be done with TENS.

On evolution, there are major problems with the Darwinian story. It isn't supported by the fossil record, no one has ever seen observed a species beget a new species by descent through gradual modification, and perhaps most tellingly, no one can agree on a single representation of the phylogenetic tree of life. That's why the taxonomists came up with cladistics, out of exasperation.

But the is a third way, a different theory somewhere in between Creation ex nihlio and Darwinism. I named it "Networked Evolution" back when I thought the idea was original. The idea is simple- all radically-new lifeforms arise from the combination of two different parent lifeforms, which don't even have to be of the same Kingdom, let alone the same Genera. (I switched terminology from "species" to "lifeform" for reason.) Every new lifeform we know about arose in this way, from artificial gene insertion to mitochondria symbiosis, to ligers and lichen and NM whiptail lizards, to the various extant hominids called h. sapiens.

But there is still Mystery here. There is no known reductionist method of creating the new lifeform by using DNA/RNA as a blueprint, homeobox genes not withstanding. Consider an extreme example, provided by marine biologist Donald Williamson. The butterfly and the caterpillar are quite obviously two completely different lifeforms with totally different body plans. Neither one can exist in the presence of the other, instead they "share a life" in Williamson's delightful phrase. But a butterfly cannot give birth to another butterfly, nor can a caterpillar beget another caterpillar. So they made deal in which one type of lifeform begets the other.

One of several major Mysteries in this extreme case comes at the moment in which the caterpillar has "died" and the butterfly is nowhere to be found, except for a few delightfully-named "imaginal cells" floating about containing its DNA. The caterpillar wove its cocoon and then completely dissolved within it, to form a 'primeval soup' of molecules along with the imaginal cells. There is no gradual "morphing" transition from one form to the other. There is no "suggested use" oriented scaffolding on which to build a butterfly. The butterfly arises out of that bag of goo as if out of nowhere.

Teenage Jail June 01, 2015 5:16 PM "I'm sure it's been said before, but White Men Can't Jump has to be among the most racist movie titles in history. It's tantamount to Black Men Can't Do Long Division, and we know that's racist."

It's not true, either. The last four Olympic high jump champions have been white. Three Russians, one Swede. You don't get whiter than that. White men can't sprint, maybe.

How racist is "Negroes can't swim"? Athletic superiority of blacks is a myth. Some who recognize that blacks are far less intelligent than pure blooded whites think that they have been given physical prowess as compensation. Not true. The world isn't fair. Deal with it or buy a helmet.

I named it "Networked Evolution" back when I thought the idea was original. The idea is simple- all radically-new lifeforms arise from the combination of two different parent lifeforms, which don't even have to be of the same Kingdom, let alone the same Genera.This is something I find delightful and whimsical in a "just-so" sort of way, or a "let's imagine all the different ways everything can happen" way but it's about as testable as TENS.

The caterpillar thing has always fascinated me, though. The fact they turn into goo while they pupate is mind-boggling, and a definite "how exactly do you explain that one, evolution?" moment.

This is awkward I answered my on question about how much worse Paris is than the 90s when the blacks were revolting.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3100744/Migrants-living-makeshift-camps-Paris-bid-reach-Britain-complain-France-noisy-smells-urine-Africa-didn-t-sleep-outdoors.html

"Hundreds of migrants living in makeshift camps in Paris have complained that the French city is too loud, stinks of urine and that 'even in Africa' they did not have to sleep outdoors.

Making their way to Britain, they have created temporary homes in the shadow of the famed Sacre Coeur basilica, above a Eurostar track leading to London.

Despite their desperation to start what they hope is a better life, the migrants are scathing of their hosts - claiming the city is far too noisy and they were better fed, clothed and housed in Italy."

You can give a dolphin a stimulating environment, enroll it in the best schools, and no amount of environment will make it as smart Several sign language primates have scored higher on g weighted IQ tests than the average IQ for some African nations. Koko the gorilla scored an 85IQ which is the average for US blacks. From a lefty link http://animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Morality/Speciesism/Case4Personhood.htm

Several sign language primates have scored higher on g weighted IQ tests than the average IQ for some African nations. Koko the gorilla scored an 85IQ which is the average for US blacks.

That's beverage-out-the-nose ridiculous. I do not believe for one second that any primate anywhere has achieved better than random on a genuine IQ test. Coached answers from hovering instructors mean nothing.

Even undisturbed African societies are light-years ahead of primate societies. And Africans have managed to absorb infinitely more from superior civilizations than primates ever have or ever will.

BigGaySteve: If I understand you correctly, I'm in agreement. I don't think we have good data on Oriental IQ in this country, let alone those in Asia. China does not pick people out of the rice paddies and ship them here, we get the middle class. And they bring their highly developed cheating culture with them. So we know that we get the better-than-average, and that they are overrated. And we have no idea how smart or dumb those folks left behind in the rice paddies, the great majority, are. Too many holes for me to believe in Oriental supremacy.

As to both at once, of course it is insanity. Just look at who is pushing it, and what they gain from it, and it makes perfect sense. Well, it is understood for what it is. The functional results and costs of enforced equality. Once all the pyramid and other sorts of economic schemes go south, the only thing left is to deny reality itself in order the kick the can a bit further. A more direct kick anyway. In some ways, it's a good sign. It means the corner they have painted themselves into is becoming too small for even them. The mind cannot maintain what the flesh cannot, it is a retreat.

It's sort of like reversing the big bang, but without the capacity to keep it all small and understandable... though as if small makes something more comprehensible. All good. They are running out of room to run, and allies who will let them, cover for them.

So we know that we get the better-than-average, and that they are overrated. [...] Too many holes for me to believe in Oriental supremacy.

Not to (necessarily) dispute any of that, but Asians in America seem to have the highest median personal income, which would be consistent with better average IQ. The cheating seems to make great scores excellent, rather than bad scores good.

Another is hard, relentless work. I went to a library one Sunday in a neighbourhood that was probably only 20% Chinese100% of the student age people in the library were Chinese. Whitey must have been recovering from a hangover or still coming down from Buzz Heaven.

An older Chinese man I talked to went to school in China. Grade school children went to school for twelve hours a day and just copied Chinese characters.

It could be that east Asians have a higher threshold for boredom than others. It simply takes longer for them to become bored, no matter how tediously repetitious the task, than for someone who is from west of the Hajnal line.

One test might be in the ROK. The South Koreans have embarked on a major diversity kick, inviting in all manner of immigrants to compensate for lower birth rate, so we'll see how that turns out in a generation or so.

Dissident Right, zen0: The Chinese in this country are not typical of Chinese as a whole. Those that come here may be a bit smarter than the average White, but there's no reason to think that the average Chinese in China is smarter than the average White. They're here because it serves the purposes of the PRC to establish an elite minority inside this country that will look out for China, just as Jewish elites have long looked out for Israel. For that, they can spare a few million mid wits.

Also, how much of their seeming mental superiority is due to, as Paradigm says, a higher threshold for boredom? Millennia of coolie labor could do that to you. While hard relentless work is a good way to weed my lawn, it's not how I create new tooling for my job.

>Progressives would rather let black children drown than admit there are racial differences or allow a white person to tell an off color joke.

That's a comedy sketch waiting to happen.

"That kid is drowning!""Oh, I guess you think he's drowning because he's black?""He's gasping for air!""Oh, I bet you think he's just excited about some fried chicken.""That's...you're really racist, actually.""Oh, I guess you think that because I'm white?""Never mind, get out of the way, I'm jumping in...""Not so fast, shitlord!"

Dissident Right, zen0: The Chinese in this country are not typical of Chinese as a whole.

Yep. Suppose you recalculated white IQ and income levels in the US after discounting all the meth-heads, PWTs and other types not with it enough that someone would sponsor them for a boat trip across the Pacific?

As to IQs measured in China, of course the Chinese government would never have some official come around the day before the test and take the dumbest students on a special two-day field trip.

I named it "Networked Evolution" back when I thought the idea was original. The idea is simple- all radically-new lifeforms arise from the combination of two different parent lifeforms, which don't even have to be of the same Kingdom, let alone the same Genera.-FB

This is something I find delightful and whimsical in a "just-so" sort of way, or a "let's imagine all the different ways everything can happen" way but it's about as testable as TENS. -Cee

I don't what TENS means. The idea that "all* radically-new lifeforms arise from the combination of two different parent lifeforms" is not merely testable, it is in evidence everywhere you look. *Aside from asexual reproduction and maybe a few other things. Two different parents produce a child. Two++ different plants produce a hybrid (e.g bread wheat is 3 different plants, which is (1 + 1) +1)). Two different lizards produce the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard. A firefly gene in a tomato produces glow-in-the-dark tomatoes.

Plus a million more examples. Williamson even went so far as to create novel, artificial marine lifeforms in his lab: a direct test of the theory.

More speculatively, the Cambrian Radiation/Explosion was a mash up between all kinds of different lifeforms, which resulted in all sorts of creatures that look like they are made out of parts of other creatures.

The caterpillar thing has always fascinated me, though. The fact they turn into goo while they pupate is mind-boggling, and a definite "how exactly do you explain that one, evolution?" moment. -Cee

Just so. (heh) The caterpillar's cells are absolutely dismantled and destroyed down to the organelle level if not lower, before the butterfly-building can start. I've been back and forth with Rupert Sheldrake on this one, to see if he can find an echo of the morphogenic field in it. Afaik, mainstream is dead silent.

Aside from the extremely-boring snarksntrollzen, can anybody envision any dangerous SF or game ideas incorporating some of this?

The caterpillar's cells are absolutely dismantled and destroyed down to the organelle level if not lower, before the butterfly-building can start. -FB

This simply cannot be. It cannot go below the cellular level. Clearly programmed cell death is involved, but cellular replication and differentiation is also involved. -The other robot

You might be right and I might have exaggerated on this point. I thought I read that in one of DW's papers but can't find the exact passage right now. In a review paper, "What is Larval Transfer?", he says:

"If you cut open a young pupa, you will find only an amorphous ʻsoupʼ.The organs and tissues of the caterpillar break down in the pupa, and they arereplaced by a soup of liquid, stem cells and ʻimaginal discsʼ. These smalldiscs were formed during the last caterpillar stage, and the cuticle, legs, wingsand nerves of the imago (adult) develop from them. All the other adult organs,including the heart, gut and digestive gland, grow from stem cells in the pupalsoup. No part of the larva becomes a part of the adult, so it is misleading tosay that a caterpillar larva metamorphoses into an adult insect." -D. Williamson

Not sure if the stem cells are de-differentiated from the caterpillar's cells. The word "replaced" doesn't make this clear.

In "Caterpillars evolved from onychophorans by hybridogenesis" he says:

"I theorize that the first insect to acquire caterpillar larvae did so by hybridizing with an onychophoran, possibly in the Upper Carboniferous period. A laboratory hybridization between extant members of these groups would be of great interest. I urge biologists with access to live onychophorans to carry out such experiments. As an initial trial, it should be possible to attach an onychophoran spermatophore to the genital pore of a female cockroach and see if fertilized eggs are laid.The origin of caterpillars, discussed here, is but one example of larval transfer."

Hmm. Is there something over at Alpha game on how to perform this experiment? (Not that I'm volunteering.)

"I also exhort biologists to produce more experimentalhybrids. Unpublished work by Nicander Boerboom andmyself indicates that pre-treatment of sea urchin eggs for40 s with acetic acid seawater (pH 5) (Raff et al. 1999)before exposure to dilute ascidian sperm can lead to a highpercentage hatch of healthy hybrid larvae. I call for morelaboratory hybrids between members of these taxa tocompare with my results (Williamson 1992, 2003), forcrosses involving other phyla, including species with andwithout lophophores, and for investigations of the chromosomesand genes of experimental hybrids." -DW

Not to (necessarily) dispute any of that, but Asians in America seem to have the highest median personal income, which would be consistent with better average IQ. The cheating seems to make great scores excellent, rather than bad scores good.

High median incomes can be explained by conservative financial practices and financial preferences that are racially weighted, i.e. Chinese doing business mostly with other Chinese when possible.

Just so. (heh) The caterpillar's cells are absolutely dismantled and destroyed down to the organelle level if not lower, before the butterfly-building can start. I've been back and forth with Rupert Sheldrake on this one, to see if he can find an echo of the morphogenic field in it. Afaik, mainstream is dead silent.

It seems that caterpillars do not turn into Nickelodeon slime and emerge as butterflies. It's pretty interesting stuff, but it's not the foundation upon which one could form a new theory on the history of life.

Forrest. You have a recursion problem. You can't get to multiple forms unless you already have multiple forms. Your theory can only explain how the current diversity of forms "evolved" from a previous diversity of forms. It cannot therefore explain diversity itself. Logic; you can either profit by it or be destroyed by it.

"Species as currently defined is just a vague sense of reproductive incompatibility"

No it's not. Reproductive incompatibility (inability to create fertile offspring) is sufficient to establish speciation, but not necessary.

"For evolution to be a workable theory of how humans came to be, it needs to "upward" and "progressive" in nature"

That's not true either. The loss of eyes in cave-dwelling fish is evolution. What do they gain? Freedom from constraints required to make functional eyes, saving energy at the very least.

Yes, the pathway to humanity gained several things. It also lost things, like the brute physical strength of chimpanzees. "Upward" in what senses?

"The butterfly and the caterpillar are quite obviously two completely different lifeforms with totally different body plans. Neither one can exist in the presence of the other, instead they "share a life" in Williamson's delightful phrase. But a butterfly cannot give birth to another butterfly, nor can a caterpillar beget another caterpillar. So they made deal in which one type of lifeform begets the other."

Much more interesting cases to watch you to speculate about are insects whose adult forms have no digestive system. Something that can eat and grow but has no reproductive organs (and thus never could perpetuate itself) "shares a life" with something that has reproductive organs but no ability to eat, and thus starves to death in a few days or hours (mayflies)? Yeah, right.

The Chinese in this country are not typical of Chinese as a whole. -> Sure, reasonably. But possibly not. Don't discount the fact that many Chinese immigrated long before there was a PRC. And don't compare to the PRC. Compare to the free-er market locations.

Also, how much of their seeming mental superiority is due to, as Paradigm says, a higher threshold for boredom? -> If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, flies like a duck...

High median incomes can be explained by conservative financial practices -> Aka intelligence.

and financial preferences that are racially weighted, i.e. Chinese doing business mostly with other Chinese when possible. -> ?

I just think there are in fact data points to suggest East Asian IQ superiority. That's all. The jury is still out.

I don't what TENS means. The idea that "all* radically-new lifeforms arise from the combination of two different parent lifeforms" is not merely testable, it is in evidence everywhere you look. *Aside from asexual reproduction and maybe a few other things. Two different parents produce a child. Two++ different plants produce a hybrid (e.g bread wheat is 3 different plants, which is (1 + 1) +1)). Two different lizards produce the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard. A firefly gene in a tomato produces glow-in-the-dark tomatoes. Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. TENS.

Also the reason I'd say it's not testable is because those aren't radically new organisms in the same sense a eukaryotic cell is radically different from a prokaryotic cell, which is the one case where this idea is spot-on (but it's also an idea that supporters of TENS mostly sort of accept, too--it's the endosymbiosis hypothesis). Lizard/lizard hybrids and wheat/wheat hybrids still produce lizards and wheat, which are not radically different from their progenitors. While I was thinking of tobacco with firefly genes when you brought this up (in the sense of, "Does that mean GMOs are the new force of speciation in the world under this scheme?"), that's human-directed gene transfer, not something that happens in the wild because a firefly and a tobacco plant love each other very much.

You'd need to demonstrate that something like, say, ape/pig hybrids had happened and could continue to happen. Or that at some point in the distant past, apes and pigs were enough like each other that they could happen, and their hybridization resulted in a totally new species. (I refer of course to this gentleman's amusing hypothesis.) And since we have not yet perfected a working time machine or other way to observe history in action, you can only make guesses off the evidence we have right now, which makes it a just-so story rather than science.

Unfortunately, the evidence tends to point more strongly toward TENS as it is currently explained, making it the dominant just-so story.

It seems that caterpillars do not turn into Nickelodeon slime and emerge as butterflies. It's pretty interesting stuff, but it's not the foundation upon which one could form a new theory on the history of life.See, now I feel dumb because I'd seen this before and knew--in some part of my brain--that's what happened, but I was still thinking of it as "turning into goo" and disregarding the fact that some body systems do stay intact.

Got too caught up in pursuing woo-woo ideas of the origin of life, I guess.

DissidentRight: The Chinese that came here before 1965 were not typical either. After the Chinese Exclusion act of the 1880s, they would had to have some kind of connection to get in. They would not be the farmers, but urbanites with some money. The Chinese who came before the exclusion were mostly men. It would have been the most successful among them who had children with the very limited number of women, making relative wealth a screening system for reproduction. Most of those men would have died childless, making the next generation the heirs of the more intelligent. All our knowledge of Chinese IQ comes from selected groups. Wealth has always been a selection mechanism for Chinese in America, unlike the mass emigration of the huddled masses from Europe. The Chinese in the US are smarter than average, but there's no reason to think that those in China are.

It's really critical to remember this point. It applies to all groups.

If you looked at people writing software in the US fifteen years ago, you might have concluded that subcontinental Indians were fantastic software engineers. In fact, some people did conclude that, and began outsources software development to India. And then they discovered that Indians on average are not very good software engineers at all. How is it that Rajeev and Venkat working in Redmond are really good but Sunil and Chandresh working in Bombay are terrible? I've seen the same with Chinese programmers working in the US (generally good) and Chinese working in Beijing (generally bad).

The initial immigrants are usually not from the middle of the Bell Curve. Left or right outliers, mostly. You can't judge the bulk of their homeland by them.

That's not true either. The loss of eyes in cave-dwelling fish is evolution. What do they gain? Freedom from constraints required to make functional eyes, saving energy at the very least.

This does not contradict my point. Continuous loss of functionality for "freedom" will not transform a bacterium to a human being.

Yes, the pathway to humanity gained several things. It also lost things, like the brute physical strength of chimpanzees. "Upward" in what senses?

You can't see the big picture at all.

TENS claims that it explains all life; that all life came from some distant ancestor, presumed to be some "basic" single-celled organism, which developed into all life we see today, including human beings.

Human beings are estimated to have somewhere around 37.2 trillion cells. So going from 1 to 3.72e13 over billions of years is obviously a certain direction and "progress". Also, mankind's general conceit that we are the pinnacle of evolution, since SMRT and civilized, is another example of "upward".

You're welcome to explain how losing eyes and other functionality, will eventually result in that increased complexity and functionality.

Since I can differentiate between two opposite directions, I don't subscribe to such nonsense. Change ("evolution") is insufficient. Biased constructive change ("progressive evolution") is needed ... but that is not observed and is not known to be a function of random processes.

The initial immigrants are usually not from the middle of the Bell Curve. Left or right outliers, mostly. You can't judge the bulk of their homeland by them.

Except that with something on the order of three to four times the population, even with a lower mean for India, it seems likely that the supply of those who can do the job is at least the same, which is a pity because it affects salaries in the US.

The Chinese in the US are smarter than average, but there's no reason to think that those in China are. -> No conclusive reason. But the Chinese in China are certainly way smarter than Africans in Africa or Africans in America.

The initial immigrants are usually not from the middle of the Bell Curve. Left or right outliers, mostly. You can't judge the bulk of their homeland by them. -> Yes. But I wouldn't have to throw out the book if we eventually find that the Chinese in China do in fact have an average IQ of 105. It's well within reason.

DissidentRight: If the average IQ of Chinese in America is 105, I find it hard to see how their kinsmen in the rice paddies would also have an average IQ of 105. That would imply that immigration has no sorting effect at all. Very unlikely.

Except that with something on the order of three to four times the population, even with a lower mean for India, it seems likely that the supply of those who can do the job is at least the same, which is a pity because it affects salaries in the US.

Based on the limited data available, I estimated subcontinental Indians to have an average IQ of 80 to 85. Given a STDEV of 16, and assuming a US white population (avg IQ 100) of 200 million and an Indian population (avg IQ 85) of 1 billion, there are equal numbers of US Whites and Indian Indians with IQs of about 112. There are approximately 5x the number of US Whites with IQs of 145+ than there are Indians in that range, despite the large population in India.

But I wouldn't have to throw out the book if we eventually find that the Chinese in China do in fact have an average IQ of 105. It's well within reason.

Why do you say that? What have the Chinese in China accomplished that would indicate they have an average IQ even over 90? Where are the towering Chinese scientists? Notable Chinese accomplishments? "What did Rome ever do for us?" is a joke, but "What did China ever do for us" is a good question.

If they're a nation of a billion people with an average IQ of 105, why is there so little to show for it?

Jack, those numbers inject some much-needed reality into the issue. From what I see on programming forums, however many smart Indians we hear there are, the outsourcing companies aren't hiring many of them. Maybe the salaries they're offering are too low to get the smart ones (Jobs Smart Indians Won't Do?); maybe they already have good-paying jobs locally.

however many smart Indians we hear there are, the outsourcing companies aren't hiring many of them. Maybe the salaries they're offering are too low to get the smart ones (Jobs Smart Indians Won't Do?); maybe they already have good-paying jobs locally.

Best I can tell, the Smart Indians were smart enough to get visas and jobs in the US paying US wages. I worked with some of them at Microsoft. Most of them came in the early or mid 90's and made at least in the neighborhood of $100k/yr. Unfortunately, a bunch of people mistook them for "average" Indians and got a little over-excited about the 1 billion still back in India, who weren't smart enough to get six figure salaries in the US...

The idea that heritable physical traits are a reliable predictor of individual virtues (intelligence; self-discipline; empathy, etc.) in a given population of people who appear to share a racial phenotype is only a horror if socialist and communists buy into it. In a free, morally upright society, it's merely a curiosity, like bimetallism."

In all fairness, one's assessment of whether that idea is a "horror" or not may well be affected by how likely one considers oneself to suffer from it or not should it be widely implemented. My opinion on whether it is acceptable to admit that Asian men are generally mathematically smarter than white men, and factor that into a decision-making process, may vary if I am up against a fellow from Beijing for an accounting job.

(I don't believe Marxist power dynamics explain all human interactions, but I do believe they are more present than they should be in many actual relationships.)

We're probably more in agreement than not, but the "horror" comes from the conflation of virtues with attributes.

In a free, Christian, democratic republic (the real thing, not what the socialists use as cover) we'd find a predominance of (some) Asian and men from certain European backgrounds (some, not all) in mathematical fields, and that (to quote SpongeBob) "would be Just Fine", IFF there weren't a U.S. Federal department of Techno-Asio-Caucasian-reparations. The same way no-one gives two pins about the predominance of German ethnicities in the beer-making industry. The SJW-goose-steppers will immediately assume anti-non-Aryan prejudice. Rational people shrug and point to the History of Beer.

My disagreement with Vox Day is a result of his misunderstanding of genetics, giving it primacy over cultural capital in determining these variation.

My intemperate language viz: Mr. Beale and some of the others who share his viewpoint (Sailor, Derbyshire, etc.) is, I admit, emotional. One cannot read stories of children consigned to Hell on earth, and, hearing "But, of course, that Hell is a function of their race, rather than the cultural obscenity that is liberalism" and not itch to make a surprise elbow-strike to the throat.

That would imply that immigration has no sorting effect at all. Very unlikely. -> It just implies that the effect is very small. Given ~2 million Chinese Americans and 1.3 billion Chinese Chinese, that's easy to believe. It's hard to believe that those 2 million come only from the very highest echelons of the Chinese bell curve.

If they're a nation of a billion people with an average IQ of 105, why is there so little to show for it? -> Good seed in bad soil produces a bad crop. It's not reasonable to compare East Asians' civilization to the West because we had ~1500 years of Christianity. Apparently we picked off all the low hanging philosophical/ mathematical/ scientific fruit.

The only comparison that seems reasonable to me is to look at how quickly the various races picked up on Western civ: particularly the industrial/ economic/ education side. Africans are at the bottom. The South Americans are above them. The East Asians accelerated like lightning and now seem to be beating us. The question is, if China were to liberalize, what makes you think it would be substantially different from Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea?

One cannot read stories of children consigned to Hell on earth, and, hearing "But, of course, that Hell is a function of their race, rather than the cultural obscenity that is liberalism" and not itch to make a surprise elbow-strike to the throat. -> One can. Good genes can still create bad culture, but bad genes are limited to bad culture. In fact, refusing to accept the primary nature of genetics guarantees that the left half of the bell curve stays doomed. If you want to save them, you need an effective "colonial" occupation (presumably a benevolent sort), not a mere imposition of culture.

My disagreement with Vox Day is a result of his misunderstanding of genetics, giving it primacy over cultural capital in determining these variation... One cannot read stories of children consigned to Hell on earth, and, hearing "But, of course, that Hell is a function of their race, rather than the cultural obscenity that is liberalism" and not itch to make a surprise elbow-strike to the throat.

In the US, the places most likely to be reasonably called Hell on Earth are metro areas with predominantly Black populations. Blacks vote 90+% for the liberalism of the Democrat party, election after election. Blacks in the hood and Blacks with degrees from elite institution all for overwhelmingly for the liberalism that consigns their children (and increasingly ours as well) to Hell on Earth. I don't know of a demographic marker, not age, sex, income level, education level, that is a better predictor of how someone is going to vote than their being Black.

So the question becomes, if it's not genetics, what is it and how do we change it? Because as things stand right now, a clear-eyed Man on a Horse looking for a purely practical solution to ending liberalism without ending voting itself would likely start by denying Blacks (and women) the franchise.

What arguments would you make to him for a different course of action?

The question is, if China were to liberalize, what makes you think it would be substantially different from Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea?

China has a less homogenous population than any of those other nations, and that matters a great deal. But also, aside from the Japanese, none of those nations have really picked up much of Western civilization in my opinion. They've thrown peasant labor into cheap and dirty manufacturing but have not shown much in the way of innovation. Granted, they are better than the Africans, but I'm not suggesting their IQs are that low. I'm also not discounting their work ethic, which is impressive. But on another note, China can't hold a candle to Japan's tradition of craftsmanship.

(The Japanese are different than the other Orientals. They are also the only nation that was not colonized by any outside powers, excepting a brief US occupation.)

Oriental peoples have certainly done much better at keeping the machinery going after their Western overlords abandoned their colonies than Africans, and slightly better than sub-continentals. Perhaps an average IQ in the low 90s?

Now, to look at you question from the other end of the telescope, if the US and Great Britain were to, well, not liberalize, but return to our traditional ways, what makes you think China and the rest of the Orient wouldn't be once again left in the dust?

but have not shown much in the way of innovation. -> Why would you expect them to show any innovation absent centuries of Christianity? Only now that they've borrowed into the intellectual framework Christianity created, I would expect to begin to start seeing some kind of innovation if they are at 100-105 IQ. But that just started a couple generations ago. If China goes at least another 200 or 300 years still showing no substantial innovation, then I'll certainly grant your point. But 40 years ago China was only marginally better than Africa. Under comparable circumstances, Europeans wouldn't be innovating this quickly--especially if the civilization they were learning from had already picked off huge swaths of low hanging fruit.

The Japanese are different than the other Orientals. -> They don't seem substantially different from Orientals who aren't living under tyrannical communism.

Oriental peoples have certainly done much better at keeping the machinery going after their Western overlords abandoned their colonies than Africans, and slightly better than sub-continentals. Perhaps an average IQ in the low 90s? -> Orientals are building their own machinery. They are lightyears ahead of the Africans, who couldn't even keep mechanized agriculture running.

if the US and Great Britain were to, well, not liberalize, but return to our traditional ways, what makes you think China and the rest of the Orient wouldn't be once again left in the dust? -> Nothing, but I would attribute that to our massive cultural and industrial headstart--not to mention the fact that the Orient is crippling itself with the same stupid government regulation with which we've crippled ourselves.

The East Asians accelerated like lightning and now seem to be beating us. The question is, if China were to liberalize, what makes you think it would be substantially different from Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea?... One can. Good genes can still create bad culture, but bad genes are limited to bad culture. In fact, refusing to accept the primary nature of genetics guarantees that the left half of the bell curve stays doomed. If you want to save them, you need an effective "colonial" occupation (presumably a benevolent sort), not a mere imposition of culture.

I will be highly amused if the spread of Christianity in China leads to a Yellow Man's Burden in the next few centuries.

I would not be shocked if Chinese IQ was actually in the mid 90s, but I just don't see decisive evidence that's the case.

Oh of course not, there isn't any decisive evidence either way. Nobody is being particularly diligent in collecting the data, we're all just guessing.

My guess is based on an expectation that the Chinese have been around long enough as a people to have more accomplishments if they were really that smart. Neither the Romans nor the Greeks had Christianity for the formative stages of their civilizations, and both have more learned contributions than Far Cathay. Good seed in bad soil, sure, but with a billion people, you make your own soil, so to speak.

I don't suppose we'll ever really know the answer. I'm not even sure it's relevant, assuming we can lever the multiculturalists out of power. Maybe even less relevant if we can't...

DissidentRight: I don't believe that the Chinese immigrants come from the highest echelons of the Chinese bell curve, I believe that the come from the right side of the bell curve, as an average IQ of 105 would indicate.

Coming up with the money and connections to fly across the Pacific Ocean does not sort people out? How many peasant farmers come here from China? Or, to put it in a more familiar context, exactly what American demographic vacations travels overseas on their own dime? The high school dropouts? The unwed mothers?

I suppose one other possibility we should consider is that the Chinese have a lower STDEV than westerners. Certainly there's no more reason to believe different races would have the same STDEV than there is to believe they would have the same AVG. Perhaps the Chinese have a STDEV of 10 instead of 16. If they did, then even with an AVG IQ of 105 and a billion people, they would still only have 1 IQ 145+ person for every 15 US White's in that range.

Chinese certainly seem more r-selected, and I would expect r-selected populations to have lower STDEVs.

Just goes to show that there's more than average and total numbers in play.

Jack Amok: I have read somewhere that Orientals have a smaller standard deviation of IQ than Whites, but I was challenged once to come up with a source for it and I couldn't, so I no longer mention it. Have you a source, or are you just speculating?

Just speculating. Any source would probably be suspect anyhow. Test the Chinese living in the US and you've only got a non-representative sub-sample. Test the Chinese living in China and you've got to assume the Chinese government doctored the results.

"Continuous loss of functionality for "freedom" will not transform a bacterium to a human being."

There's more mass of bacteria on Earth than primates of all species, and bacteria can survive events that would drive all vertebrate life extinct. And what makes humans the pinnacle of everything, except Christian dogma and human conceit?

"You can't see the big picture at all."

There isn't one. Teleology doesn't exist. That humans happened, with the capacity to understand the universe in some broad sense, isn't the consequence of a plan but a happy accident. I'm very happy to be part of that accident, especially living in the time when we grasped it. But I understand that it is an accident.

"TENS claims that it explains all life"

Wrong. It explains ONE of the pressures on reproducers, once they exist. Before they exist, and the other pressures, are outside TENS.

"Human beings are estimated to have somewhere around 37.2 trillion cells. So going from 1 to 3.72e13 over billions of years is obviously a certain direction and "progress"."

So what's the pinnacle of "progress" by your measure? The blue whale is pretty big, but there appear to be plants and maybe mycelia that are much bigger (in mass and cell count). Humans don't rank so high by either.

Did it ever occur to you that the whole idea of "progress" is inapplicable in this context, and evolution by natural selection just works to make something that's a better survivor than what came before, in the conditions of the time? For instance, a genius taking time out until age 35 to study physics and cosmology is evolutionarily inferior to the hood rat who pumps out a baby every year starting at 13... in that particular environment? Conditions can change in an instant (and there are some I'd change at the point of a gun) but the point remains.

"mankind's general conceit that we are the pinnacle of evolution"

Projection. "Made in the image of God" goes hand-in-hand with "I didn't come from no monkey".

"You're welcome to explain how losing eyes and other functionality, will eventually result in that increased complexity and functionality."

It doesn't result in anything, it creates freedom. Eyes are useless in perpetual darkness, as grasping toes have little use on flat ground. Losing the eyes and grasping toes relaxes constraints, allowing other changes with immediate advantages. The freed constraints of the blind fish might make one that senses better by pressure, chemicals or electric potentials. The ape that no longer grasps with its lower appendages can change to walk and run more efficiently. The ape that loses peak strength but gets the coordination to consistently hit a target with a pointed stick at a distance...

I know you resist this entire chain of reasoning, but it doesn't cease to exist thereby any more than racial differences in IQ and behavior go away because SJWs deny them.

Post a Comment

Rules of the blogPlease do not comment as "Anonymous". Comments by "Anonymous" will be spammed.